Moon Music

6

“According to the computer, Newel’s mother lives in Ohio.” Mick Weinberg slugged down black coffee. “We called the number—it was disconnected. So much for our hookup to Washington’s Find a Person Search database.”

Squinting behind his glasses. The lieutenant needed bifocals, but had been too busy to make the appointment. He lowered his specs, looked across the table at three of his homicide detectives. A good bunch … a tired bunch.

Weinberg rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, loosened his tie. Stuffy without the fan. Moisture had formed in the pits of his muscled arms and on the top of his bald head. He wondered when Myra intended to turn it on.

He went on, “Nothing comes up by way of a father. So that means someone here who knew Brittany is going to have to make a formal ID. The ex-boyfriend’s our best bet. Rom, you go call—Rom, you with us?”

Poe yanked open his eyes. “I’m here.”

The lieutenant pushed Poe’s coffee cup toward his sergeant. “Drink.”

Poe picked up his mug, sipped, then drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Is there any milk?”

Weinberg shouted, his voice carrying easily in the empty restaurant, “Myra, could we get some Mocha Mix? Also maybe a little food? These good public servants need some nutrition.”

The phantom voice responded, “The steamer’s still heating up.”

“What about the griddle?” Weinberg called out.

Myra answered, “If you beg, I suppose I can whip up some deli omelets.”

Weinberg faced his crew. “Deli omelets okay?”

“Sounds great.” Jensen suddenly realized he was famished.

Patricia answered, “I’ll eat anything.”

Someone started pulling on the locked glass door. Weinberg turned around, yelled, “We’re closed!” Gesticulations. “We open at eleven.” Flashing ten splayed fingers, then the index digit. “Eleven!” Frowned. To himself, the loo muttered, “Can’t they read the damn sign?”

Poe continued to swallow the sour brew. “Were you talking to me, Lieutenant?”

“I just assigned you Brittany’s ex-boyfriend, Trent Minors. Take him down to the morgue for a positive ID.”

“Do you want Brittany ID’d in her current condition?”

“What condition, Poe? She’s dead.”

“Lieutenant, she’s monstrous. Half of her has been flayed. Her left eyeball is miss—”

Abruptly, he stopped talking.

“What?” Weinberg asked.

Poe blinked. “Nothing.”

“Don’t give me that.”

“A passing thought.”

“So pass it by me, Poe.”

“A flash of déjà vu.” Poe hesitated. “When I was a kid, there was this case—a grotesque murder—maybe even more than one, I don’t remember too well. Judging by today’s standards—with guys like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy—it doesn’t seem extraordinary. But as a kid, I … we were all terrorized. Thought this guy was the bogeyman incarnate. That’s what we called him. The Bogeyman. For a while, the whole thing terrorized the town.”

“Which town?” Patricia asked.

“Here. Vegas.”

Weinberg said, “I don’t remember anything like this.”

“Probably before your time, sir. Roughly twenty-five years ago.”

“A good ten years before.”

Poe said, “Even then I doubt if it infiltrated into the Strip. If the powers that were kept atomic testing under wraps, I don’t imagine a couple of murders would be a problem. But back then, in the ’burbs …” He raised his brow. “It freaked us out.”

“Do you even remember the specifics?” Jensen remarked.

Poe suddenly felt a chill. Things that happened in childhood … so much more intense. “There were rumors. Probably apocryphal, but they said that the killer had desecrated the corpses. He had scooped out the eyeballs—”

“Omelets, anyone?” Myra chirped. In the middle of the table, she plunked down a platter of scrambled eggs filled with pastrami, salami, and smoked turkey. Big chunks of flesh-colored meat gelatinously wrapped in quivering ovum.

Jensen said, “Ever notice how visceral-looking eggs are?”

The table groaned.

Unceremoniously, Myra dropped four plates and silverware onto the table along with a carton of Mocha Mix. She put graceful, blue-veined hands on her hips. She had short nails … immaculately clean. She was in her mid-fifties, hazel eyes with short gray hair cut like Prince Valiant’s. A round, open face which, at the moment, spelled annoyance. She wore a white shirt, gray skirt, and white chef’s apron. Tennis shoes covered her feet. “You have complaints, take it elsewhere.”

“Looks good to me.” Jensen picked up a spoon and a plate, then heaped eggs on his dish. “Looks wonderful, in fact. Thanks, Myra. I’m starved.”

The woman smiled warmly. “More coffee, Steve? Orange juice?”

“Both would hit the spot, thank you.”

Weinberg passed out the remaining dishes. “Help yourselves.”

Patricia eyed the eggs. Now if she was going to eat toast, she’d better give herself a small portion of omelet. A pause. Then again, she hadn’t eaten since dinnertime last night. And it was half past ten. Still, all that salami and pastrami. All that fat! Wherever she looked … subversion.

Poe poured Mocha Mix into his coffee. “You know, you’re spoiling us, Myra.”

“She spoils everyone.” The lieutenant polished off his coffee. “We have so many people running in and out of our condo, I’m thinking about selling time shares.”

“Everyone loves Vegas,” Myra said.

“Everyone loves a freebie,” Patricia said.

“You got that right, Deluca. We keep getting all these out-of-the-blue relatives popping in. People she’s never heard of, let alone met.” Weinberg looked at his wife. “But she lets them stay anyway.”

“Just in case,” Myra answered.

“In case of what?” Jensen asked.

Myra stared at him, shrugged.

“As if that explains it,” Weinberg groused. “Are you going to turn on the fan, Myra?”

“Yeah, it is kind of stuffy, isn’t it.” She spooned eggs onto her husband’s plate. “Eat before they get cold, Mick. I’ll get the toast.” Before Myra left, she tapped his head.

From his pants pocket, Weinberg pulled out a yarmulke. He placed it over his bald pate. To Poe, he said, “So what made you think of this twenty-five-year-old case? The scooped-out eye?”

“Probably.”

“Was it true?” Patricia asked.

“Beats me.” Poe shifted the conversation. “Loo, I think Trent Minors deals the noon-to-midnight shift. I’ll try to catch him before he goes to work.”

“Good idea. I also want one of you to go back and comb the scene of the crime now that we have some visibility. I got a uniform out there guarding the place. The sooner the better.”

Jensen asked, “What should we be looking for?”

Weinberg chomped at a piece of pastrami gristle. “She was found nude from the waist up. Maybe some kind of top … shoes … maybe a purse.” He washed down his breakfast with a full cup of water. “Some storm last night. The wind could have blown items all over the effing place.”

“If the killer dumped her belongings along with the body,” Poe said.

Patricia said, “Think the killer would want to keep a trophy, Loo?”

“Sure. But how likely would it be that he’d keep everything? We found her pretty bare-bones, no bad pun intended.”

Poe speared a piece of smoked turkey, chewed it thoughtfully. “Patricia, you want to go out?”

“I’ll go out.”

“And me?” Jensen asked.

Poe said, “We still don’t have any idea about Brittany’s final hours. Someone should start checking out the bars—”

“Wouldn’t that be better done at night, Sergeant?”

Poe nodded. “You can do that as well. But based on how low Brittany had fallen, she could have been a day-tripper, too. Someone should check out the naked city.”

Jensen said, “I’ll do it.”

“I thought you had tickets to the fabulous Oldies show at the MGM,” Patricia said.

“I … gave them away.” Jensen sighed. “Alison hasn’t been feeling well.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Poe broke the tension. “How about this? After you two finish up with the crime scene, Patricia can comb the bars and Steve will work the bellmen. I think they’d open up easier man to man.”

Besides, Stevie had lots of personal connections.

“Fine,” Jensen answered.

Weinberg said, “What’re you doing after the ID, Rom?”

“Figured I’d talk to Dr. Kalil. Find out how Newel died. See if she was skinned alive.”

“Good God, is that level of detail truly necessary? I know, I know.” Patricia helped herself to another serving of omelet. “Yes, of course it is. Find out if the guy is a sadistic killer or just a closet pathologist. Anyone notice if the body had stab wounds or bullet holes?”

“It was dark, Deluca,” Jensen answered.

And old Steve had been as sick as a dog.

Poe said, “I couldn’t tell, either. I’ll ask Rukmani about it. It would be nice to know if we should be looking for shell casings or a discarded knife.”

“Could you tell if the murder occurred at the body drop?” Weinberg asked.

“Didn’t see a big pool of blood.” Jensen paused. “For whatever that’s worth. It was real windy last night.”

“The desert sand is a natural litterbox,” Poe said. “Blood could have been soaked up by the surface grit and blown away.”

“And just as easily,” Weinberg said, “if there was enough blood, it could have seeped down a couple of inches and spread out in the underlying clay bed. And there it may lie still.”

“So I’ll root through the surface sand,” Patricia said.

Again, Poe drummed the tabletop with his fingers. He said, “Aren’t we forgetting about someone?”

“Lewiston,” Patricia answered.

“What do you want to do about him, Loo?”

“Premature to question him.”

“He fucked her, sir.”

“Rom, she was a hooker. He is an eccentric billionaire who has probably fucked three-quarters of the girls in this city. When you figure how much fucking was going on, their lives were bound to intersect. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“He’s a link.” Poe paused. “I could go to him with the angle that I’m asking for his help.”

“He isn’t going to swallow that horseshit. Parkerboy won’t give us squat without proper papers.”

“Loo, if Brittany’s sugar daddy had been Joe Blow—”

“Who says Lewiston was Brittany’s sugar daddy? The girl was a whore. They’re notorious liars. You’re basing all of this on the word of one disgruntled boyfriend.”

“So let me ask Lewiston about it. Let him deny it.”

No one spoke.

Weinberg relented. “All right. After you’re done with the ID, and after you’ve finished with Dr. Kalil and the crime scene, then you can go attempt contact. But don’t be disappointed if you come back empty-handed.”

Jensen smirked. “You just want an excuse to go to the Laredo. No-limit tables. One-deck shoes.”

Poe returned the evil grin with one of his own. But the accusation was true. Steve knew his number. Equally true, Poe knew Jensen’s quirks … down to the eye color of his whores.

Too bad neither really knew Alison.

7

“If you’re asking me about a smoking gun, I’m going to tell you no, nothing yet. These things take time, Romulus.”

Rukmani was talking through a white paper mouth and nose mask. Head down, she was peering into a sea of tissue and viscera, probing at something red and squishy with a metal instrument. An hour ago, Trent Minors had been vomiting over Brittany’s face. Now the young girl had been literally reduced to flesh and bones.

Again, Rukmani spoke … more like muttered. Poe could barely understand her. “Can you take a break?”

“A break?”

“Yes. Like a coffee break. Or a tea break?”

She looked up, covered the dissected body with a tarp. “Is the smell bothering you?”

“A little.” Poe snapped his fingers as his eyes swept across the steel room of death. They eventually settled upon Rukmani, dressed in surgical blues. Wrapped up like an anoxic mummy. He said, “It’s hard to talk in here.”

“C’mon.” She untied her mask, snapped off her gloves. “But only for five minutes. I don’t like to leave my bodies unattended.”

“Thanks.” He kissed her cheek. She stank of formaldehyde.

Together they boarded a two-person staff-only elevator.

Staff only.

As if a morgue would be teeming with visitors.

They took the lift to the third floor. Her office was immediately to the right. About the size of a coffin, but it had a ceiling and a lockable door, and it was all her own. A standard-issue desk and a couple of chairs. A wall of bookshelves held medical tomes and pictures of her two grown children—twenty-five-year-old Shoba, a sophomore at Harvard Medical School, and twenty-seven-year-old Michael, a resident in radiology at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.

Married in the old country, Rukmani had given birth to her son two weeks past her sixteenth birthday. The untimely death of her much older mercantile husband, a hidden cache of rainy-day money, and a couple of American relatives had given her a new life in the States. In the States, she wasn’t judged by her caste or her in-laws. In the States, she wasn’t forced to avoid the sun to keep her Indian complexion as Anglo-light as possible. Probably the reason why she had moved to Vegas. At the moment, Ruki was nutmeg-brown.

“Sit.” All business. She said, “What specifically do you want to know?”

“Bullet holes?”

“Not yet.”

“Stab wounds?”

“None so far.”

Poe felt ill. “She died while this monster was gouging out her eyeball?”

“Not necessarily.”

Poe drummed on her desktop, waited.

Rukmani said, “There are other ways to murder besides stabbing and shooting.” She made an imaginary needle with her finger and stuck it in the crook of her arm.

Poe said, “He OD’d her first?”

“Or at least sedated her. That’s my guess.”

“You found something in her veins.”

“Bloodwork hasn’t come back yet.” Rukmani pushed her glasses back on her nose, then put her hands over his to quiet his fidgeting. “You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

“An hour at my desk this morning. What about you?”

“About four hours.” A pause. “Come to my place tonight. I’ll cook you dinner. If your face drops in the mulligatawny, I won’t say a word.”

“Sounds wonderful, but I’m probably going to pull another all-nighter.”

“Romulus, you can’t work effectively on an hour’s sleep.”

She was right. He said, “Nothing happens in this town before dark. I’ll grab a couple of hours of sleep before I go out again.”

Rukmani looked grave. “Why don’t you live in a normal house?”

“I like where I live. It’s very quiet.”

“It doesn’t have running water or electricity.”

“Modern conveniences are highly overrated.”

“At least get a box spring for the mattress.”

“I couldn’t get it through the doorframe.”

“So get a bigger door, for godsakes.”

“Why are you pissed at me? You know I’d love to come for dinner, spend the night with you engaged in wild, passionate lovemaking. Do you think I’m working by choice? I’m paid to do a job. Just like you.”

“There’s work,” Rukmani said, “and there’s work-obsessed.”

“Ain’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

This time, Rukmani remained quiet.

Poe thought: Maybe this is why she’s so standoffish. She doesn’t like my house. Or my hours. Still, she keeps the same hours. He steered the conversation back toward business. “Why do you think she was sedated while he was … you know … flaying her?”

“The evenness of some of the gouge marks. Almost ruler-perfect parallel lines. If she had been awake, she would have been thrashing about, and the lines would have been squiggly.”

“What about if he bound her?”

“Even so, she could have squirmed unless he had her head in a vise. Even with millimeters’ worth of motion, there would have been waves or chinks in the lines. Some of the rakes were almost … surgical in their precision.”

“Someone from the medical profession?”

“Possibly. Or someone who’s very exacting.”

Poe made a sour face. “So she was either sedated or dead when he … attacked her.”

“There was evidence of fresh bleeding into the depressions. I’d say she was sedated. Very heavily sedated. Alive but unconscious. She probably never felt a thing.” She gave him a weak smile. “Small comfort.”

He thought about her words. “That could say something about the killer.”

“Like what?”

“He’s a control freak. Wants her completely defenseless so he can do his thing. Doesn’t want to leave anything up to chance.”

“Or maybe he has sensitive ears and doesn’t like screaming.”

Poe nodded. “You may have something there.”

“Sensitive ears?”

“He doesn’t like to hear screaming because he doesn’t do torture for torture’s sake.”

“Just enjoys raking human flesh?” Rukmani shook her head. “I suppose a boy needs a hobby.”

Poe was talking as much to himself as to Rukmani. “He likes killing. He likes … dressing his victim in a certain fashion. But like a hunter with his prey. Hunters don’t get their kicks out of torturing animals. They like clean, kill shots. One big bam and the animal keels over. The thrill is the hunt.”

“And the head on the wall afterward,” Rukmani stated. “Something they can brag about. Maybe that’s what she was. A trophy kill.”

“She wasn’t dressed or displayed like a trophy kill.” Poe paused. “Of course, I got to her after she’d been in a windstorm. Who knows what she looked like before?”

Rukmani said, “I should be getting back.”

Poe said, “Do you have a fix as to what kind of instrument made the gouges?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me that.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve found flakes of metal lodged where it touched bone … consistent with a rake or some kind of tool. But I’ve also found bits of tooth enamel.”

“Consistent with biting.”

“No bite marks, Rom. More like … methodical tearing at the victim with the teeth.” She looked away. “There was something very animalistic about this death. Like he was … eating her—”

“Oh Christ!”

“—or more like grazing.”

“This is truly nauseating.”

Rukmani scratched at her hair tucked under a scrub cap. “This has not been an easy autopsy. It’s going to take a while before I come to anything definitive.” She stood. “I’ve really got to go.”

Poe got up as well. “I can’t entice you with a quick lunch at my place?”

“Lunch?”

“Well, lunch and munch.”

Rukmani laughed, hit his shoulder. “I’d love to, but I’ve got this corpse—”

“Aha! Okay for you to refuse me, but—”

“Rom, you leave a body exposed for more than a short period of time, it screws up every—”

“When it’s your ox that’s being gored—” Poe stopped talking. “Why did I say that?”

Rukmani smiled with fatigue. “My place, tomorrow night?”

“It’s a deal.”

“We are really too busy. We never see each other.”

“Guess that makes us a true ideal American couple.”

“If we’re going to lapse into mindless treadmilling and burnout, we might as well get married.”

“Name a date.”

She waved him off, kissed his cheek. “Mind if I don’t walk you out? Brittany Newel is calling my name.”

Poe snapped his fingers. “You actually think of her as Brittany Newel?”

“You bet I do. She had a name in life. I’ll be damned if I’ll take it away in death.”

Day, night, it didn’t matter, the bars in Vegas looked the same—dimly lit, smoky atmosphere, lots of tabletop slots and poker machines. The saloon at Casablanca sat in the center of the casino, a giant disk with tables and chairs rotating a full circle every hour. Usually lounges-in-the-round were reserved for places with a view. But the only vistas here were the gaming pits and rows of slots. Patricia knew that was the point. To entice the drinkers to leave and gamble.

It had been one hell of an afternoon. Productive, though. She had been the first to find evidence—a spike-heeled shoe. More important, she had found the purse—an ecru macramé thing about fifty yards from where Brittany had been dropped. Blended in perfectly with the sandy layer of Las Vegas desert. It contained her driver’s license, two maxed-out credit cards, three hundred bucks, and several plastic cellophane packets of rock crystal cocaine.

Superficially, it appeared that neither robbery nor drugs had been a motive. But she knew that the whole thing could have been a setup to deflect Homicide.

Still, she had been proud of herself. Weinberg had congratulated her, slapped her back, then given her a list of bars to comb. Twenty of them.